If you really want to hear music properly buy a 'DAC Destroyer' plug it into your USB & use a decent amp & speakers & a half decent phono - phono interconnect, wipes the floor with any sound chip. No drivers required, you can disable all sound drivers in DM.

So far so good on Windows 7, no added damage on XP system, so it's doing ok. It is rather annoying to have to let it uninstall the old driver, reboot, rediscover, reboot and then finally end up with the driver installed but your EQ settings lost.

I've given up on custom EQ in this setup - I just have it set to the pre-specified POWERFUL selection and that does a pretty good job.

Under XP you could easily use a REG file to keep loading your custom setup, but it works differently on Win 7.

These seem to cause trouble on my Windows XP systems but help on my Windows 7 system. Mixed bag, as usual.

Given that Microsoft has pretty much ripped out the sound code and rewrote it all in software, and that multi-core systems are in place in many homes, onboard sound can give very, very good results compared to dedicated cards.

Given how inconsistent Creative drivers have been over the years, it's no wonder that most people are not upset about the change in the way sound is processed in Vista and Win 7 and the push for onboard sound has taken hold so substantially .

Regardless, I'm not that happy about the combined codec download and codebase. I wish that they would optimize code for each chipset on each platform. As it is, if they tweak stuff for Win 7, they sometimes goof up something in Windows XP, and that kinda sucks.

But it is what it is and it works ok for now I guess. I can always just leave the XP systems at the earlier versions.

I'm sure everyone who has posted a review regarding Realtek audio chipsets is correct. You see, there's more to this issue than just black and white.

The first factor in the equation is the model chipset itself. The 889A is superior to the 883, for example.

The second factor is the implementation of the chipset on the motherboard you own. Every motherboard model implements the chipset differently & sometimes it is only slight differences. However, those differences can affect the sound quality in huge ways. Some motherboard models have vastly superior audio implementations than others.

The third and final factor is variances in production. You may have the bad luck to get either a chipset or a motherboard that is borderline when it comes to quality control.

Having said that, the Realtek 889A chipset on my particular Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R playing through my Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 speakers is pretty gosh darn awesome so I give a 5-star rating.

I wish everyone shared my good luck, but sadly that's just not the way this particular aspect of computing works. Shortcomings in any of the factors above is going to result in a below-optimal, maybe even craptacular, experience.

STFU dumba** cyber db. I've had a good sound card and good speakers before and I could gas what your mobo says. A real soundcard makes anything sound better. FU
Just as good? Just as good for the average user but not for someone who prefers asio output & more control as well with optionall rca jacks. If it had asio support I would change my mind but for professional audio, mobo's just don't cut the mustard. Try again. You guys need to understand how quality audio hardware works and it was invented long before your mobo and still sounded better back then. They have made mobos with tubes just for the audio. In fact the best stuff still uses tubes. If you cannot tell the difference between a live performance and the latest digital recording you're just plain clueless. Top notch audio eqpt is not a freebee that comes with pc mobo's. A high end audio card will cost as much as whatever price you may ever pay for an entire mobo. I wonder why that is? Hmm

Not impressed with HD onboard audio at all. The cheapo speakers I have have a loudness button which to me sounds better than the software version this has. Nothing to complain about here except for the fact I haven't bought an asus xonar dg yet. Even with an average pair of speakers, a real audio card will put out a much cleaner sound than this will regardless of the mobo.
Easiest way to get the drivers is to go herehttp://www.station-drivers.com/
Artem is so right. That's like saying that generic video drivers are better than the latest official ones.

This new version, 253 (or v6215 in the DXDIAG screen) seems to work as well as 252 (v6194) did, but for some reason it seems like 240 (v6013) worked the best so far. I'll do more detailed testing and post back if I find anything of note.

It is frustrating that when you install a new version over an existing installation, it doesn't remember all of your EQ settings. I have to re-enter the custom EQ settings into the registry and then load those settings manually again each time I upgrade. I wish that wasn't necessary.

UPDATE: I've done some more detailed testing and am finding that any of the 2.5x series seem to be less stable than earlier releases on my particular system, which has a GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P motherboard. After all of the testing I've been doing and re-doing, it appears that version 2.40 gives me the most stable, consistent performance, so I'm sticking with that. I wonder what they did wrong in later versions?

LOL! Once upon a time when I was lost in the woods, I realized that after passing a certain familiar tree a few times I was only going in circles. Clicking on this link brought back some great memories! Thanks Realtek and fileforum.

What can happen in one month is that BFBC2 came out and its a known issue that on board realtek audio chipsets are causing the game to freeze/crash to desktop. I dont have a realtek chip but my onboard audio was causing the issues for me to. Switched to a sb live audigy and the probelm went away. For 3 days i played lag free then they patched the game and its crashing to desktop now. GRRRRRR

New games, new patches, etc. means that updates are needed to keep things playing smooth. It seems like a reasonable schedule given the complexity of sound drivers in the crazy world of buggy apps, etc.

So far, so good for this latest release. Still have to change FireFox to use the IE engine for Realtek's page, but it works okay to download it after that.

As for the drivers, each incremental release over the 6 months has made no noticeable changes for me, but frankly that's fine since everything is currently working as expected. I give 5 stars for the team at RealTek continuing to support their products.

If you're getting "object moved here" when you download "directly from within betanews", it's caused by an issue or setting (yet to be determined) with firefox @ default settings and Realtek's website.

I must use the Internet Explorer browser rendering engine and then it will work. I have no luck with Firefox in it's native rendering engine.

I still find my best luck on XP 32 Bit with SP3 to be with earlier versions. These updates for Vista / Win 7 do not seem to benefit the XP in any way I can find, nor do they seem to function quite as "normal"

Something feels off but I can't yet place it. If I do I will update later.

Please, use this [http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=14&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3 link] to download the drivers. The link given by Betanews will never allow you to download drivers.

I have a fairly expensive Creative setup on my main computer and Realtek on my second one. Having always been a Creative nut I have to say Realtek works just as good for me. Never thought I would say that!!

Version 236 (5969) seems to work as well as 234 (5943) and 235 (5953) on my system. No errors, no crashes, no slow-downs - at least so far.

It is annoying that installing a newer version over older versions still appears to force a reset of EQ settings. Thankfully, I backed up the registry entries for those EQ settings before installation of the newer driver and all I had to do was double-click on that dot REG file to load them into the registry, replacing those default settings.

Still, it seems like this is the 3rd entry in a row to show no downside that I can find. So, 4 stars it is.

Great drivers. For people running ATI Radeon HD 4xxx cards I recommend using these drivers instead of the ones that are part of the Catalyst driver package. As others have noted it is infuriating trying to get the drivers from the Realtek website. I advise people to visit MajorGeeks.com. They always have the download mirrored with good download speeds.

I've just installed v. "2.28" on my Vista Laptop. The actual version number is 6.0.1.5888. I assume the XP version number would be 5.0.1.5888.

Since I do not have access to a "change log", I do not know what changes from 2.27 were actually made, but I can notice no difference in the software, or in performance from previous versions.

However, I have noticed that the installation procedure for the Realtek driver is different from any other driver or application. In order to properly update this driver, you must click on the executable file, and follow the directions offered. I'm not sure what actually is done, but one of the things that happens is that the previous version of the driver is removed. Everything is fine up to that point. A reboot is then required. That is OK. When the machine boots up, the user then must click again on the executable in order to finish the installation. Follow directions and then reboot (again). The executable is run twice. You must reboot twice. This is very unusual. I've never seen it elsewhere, and I wonder how many folks try to install this driver and fail because they don't read or comprehend the instructions. I suggest that Realtek completely rewrite their installer to make installation easier. Rebooting twice should not be necessary. Executing the file twice should not be necessary. Realtek must change this.

I'll outline the multiple version experience in the hopes that it may be help to others who might have the same types of issues.

First - The 221 driver set seems to be the most stable for me on a Windows XP Pro SP2 and/or SP3 platform configuration. If I revert back to that version or use that version in a fresh install (I use Norton Ghost to backup and restore disk images when testing) things seem to work as expected as far as I can tell. But 224, 225, 226, 227 all seem to have issues that are discernable. So I'm using 221 as a base of reference when outlining the problems encountered in later releases.

After installing the Realtek driver, the Realtek Control Panel (RTHDCPL.EXE) is loaded into the Startup group that you can see when executing MSCONFIG from the Run menu / dialog.

With 221, the control panel icon appears in the system tray and seems to function properly. I can either double-click on that icon or right-click over that icon and choose "Sound Manager" to bring up the actual cyan / aqua colored control panel interface. The 5 icons on the "dial" to the right of the EQ bars all respond to mouse input and seem to work as expected. I can define, load, save and delete custom EQ settings as well as enable disable the EQ effect itself. So naturally, this functionality is what I expect from the driver. However, later versions are showing glitches that affect all or part of the functionality available in 221.

In no particular order:

- The Realtek Control Panel loads but does not display the system tray Icon
- The system tray icon shows, but the CP application cannot be executed from it
- If the CP does appear, loading, saving and deleting custom EQ settings fails

Via a search, I found that if you go into the Windows Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel) and execute the "Realtek HD Sound Effect Manager", the Realtek panel may load up. If it does, you should be able to click on the small "i" icon in the lower-left corner to bring up the Information window. In the lower-left area of that dialog you can toggle the status of the system tray icon.

Via another search, I found that you can manually alter the registry to allow your custom EQ settings to be loaded as the default. That can be a long process, requiring to you find the "[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Realtek\EQ]" registry entry and doing some manual tweaking to eliminate corrupt entries. It's a hassle.

If you have a working EQ setup, you may want to open up that path in Regedit and create a backup by exporting existing EQ values.

That's what I have been able to figure out so far. Hope it helps some of you when trying to deal with the parade of releases that Realtek has made lately.

I wonder if Realtek realizes that people sit there and try ALL their FTP/HTTP sites to determine which one is the fastest, thereby negating the advantage of having more than one option for where to download? Surely this causes them more traffic overhead than simply having the server decide the best download location?

One also must question how crappy the driver code must be to release weekly versions. There is that much more potential for coding errors.

Version 2.26 (v5864) seems to fix at least some of the 2.25 issues. But I just noticed that 2.27 is out, so perhaps they found a show-stopper and issued a quick fix.

Frequent updates are ok as long as they fix things, but I wish they would do more thorough testing before they released a new version. Fast and sloppy doesn't win over doing it right the first time. I hope they do better in the near future.

Provided link loops indefinitely with a "Object moved" link. The driver probably doesn't work either as I've experienced problems with all version after 2.00 where my S/PDIF 5.1 speakers work like they should. Installing any higher version results in my speakers are forced to stereo, and there's no way to change it back to 5.1 speakers :P

the link > takes you to realtek.com.tw and then onto a list of download ...
and then one of the following
Firefox = 550 Cannot change directory
Chrome = "Realtek download ... dont support Google Chrome ... use IE 6"
IE 8 = links 1,2,3 dont work ... express also dont work but gives ftp details

eventually I downloaded using FileZilla (FTP client)

Please BetaNews check how easy it is to download on external sites and please host downloads on your own servers, the ones that work :-)

I am having trouble with an install and subsequent instabilities of 225. I restored my 221 ghost image and everything worked fine.

As a result, I'm not going to be able to rate 225 as even being functional.

One link that may be helpful. Realtek will release items as R221, R224, R225, etc. but when you look for the driver version in Windows XP, it uses a completely different driver version numbering system.

The address below shows the long-form version number and the corresponding Rxxx short form number.

The first was the driver version which is (evidently) 2.55 rather than 2.25.

The 2nd surprise came during installation. Every driver up to and including 2.24 required that the .exe be run, the computer rebooted, and the .exe be run a second time, and the computer be rebooted a second time. Evidently the RealTek programmers got their "stuff" together and figured out how to install a new version without the 2nd execution and the 2nd boot. Way to go, RealTek.

And the 3rd surprise was the application GUI, which really was changed, not necessarily for the better, but certainly not for the worse.

Whether or not sound quality was improved is a question I shall leave to the Audio experts. But, at least, there is considerable improvement in the installation process.

Wow, they're really pumping these drivers out. A version a week, almost!

Regardless of bugs that might pop up, it's good to see a "budget" hardware company put this kind of effort into their supporting software. Far too many (cough, Creative, cough) just seem to fix things when they feel like getting around to it, if ever.

I attempted twice to install Version 2.20 and on both occasion my sound system stopped working and the Realtek HD icon disappeared from the task bar and the Control Panel. I then reverted to the previous version and had no problems at all.

This version thrashed my surround sound. I have a Pioneer DCS-580 connected by S/PDIF. After installing this I noticed that the Realtek HD Audio Manager had dissapered from the Control Panel. In the Sound options I could only select stereo. Installing my old driver, version 2.00, fixed it all and now I have 5.1 DTS again.

Jun 11, 2012 - 2:05 PM

Sep 2, 2011 - 8:37 PM

What a laugh. Nviida video drivers and Realtek audio drivers have a version every month. Makes you think that "gee glad I have them or else my computer wouldn't be able to work w/o them? What's all this about anyway?